Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by otteromkram 521 days ago
Also self-taught SQLer and I don't have an issue with NULL.

I also don't use UNIQUE constraints, so maybe that has something to do with it.

1 comments

I don't have an issue as such, I was a fairly experienced developer first time I had to dabble with SQL, but sometimes it can still surprise.

For example I learned the hard way that the DB we use at work does not index NULL values.

And once in a while if I'm tired or stressed I might forget about UNKNOWN and thus that "Col <> 42" does not return rows where Col is NULL.

Not that better naming would prevent such surprises, but I still think the current naming is less than optimal from a pedagogical perspective. At least I see this at times when teaching our support folks SQL (many have domain background and not a technical background).